


Darkness Falls

by jedicallie (writergirlie)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-27
Updated: 2010-05-27
Packaged: 2017-10-09 18:15:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/90170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writergirlie/pseuds/jedicallie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Callista is forced to confront her darkest fears. (contains spoilers for <i>Allies</i>)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Darkness Falls

**Author's Note:**

> For those who have not read the latest Star Wars book, _Allies,_ just a word of warning: this fic will have spoilers for one of its biggest reveals in the end. It'll have much more of an impact if you've read that, along with all of the books from the Callista trilogy, as it's my way of closing out Callista's story. For Callie fans, I hope this can provide closure.
> 
> To my fellow Callistars, who I'm sure will keep the banner raised high for all time. Long live Callie in fanfic :).

_ The darkness was eternal, all-powerful, unchangeable. She stared into it, unblinking and unafraid. She was determined that it would not claim her. She had resisted it these many years. She would resist it forever, never despairing. It was unchangeable, but change would take place. The Force said so._

_\-- from _Outcast_, by Aaron Allston_

_When it all began_

_We knew there’d be a price…_

_Once upon a dream_

_We were lost in love’s embrace_

_There we found a perfect place_

_Once upon a dream…_

_And I was unafraid_

_The dream was so exciting_

_But now I see it fade_

_And I am here alone…_

_Once upon a dream_

_You were heaven sent to me_

_Was it never meant to be?_

_Was it just a dream?_

_Could we begin again?_

_Once upon a dream…_

_\-- “Once Upon a Dream” (Jekyll &amp; Hyde)_

 

 

It wasn’t the dark side that Callista Masana had felt when she entered the cave.

 

At least, not in the form she’d touched before: that awful, powerful charge that had surged through her body like an fevered electric current, alluring and repulsive all in the same. There was no mistaking it for the light, even as it beckoned her into its shadow. Quicker, easier, more seductive—it was full of promises and temptations, ones she knew would be empty. And she had known there was no other choice than to turn away from it, even if it meant turning away from everything that ever meant anything to her.

 

But this… This was different.

 

It was quiet and gentle, like a murmur or the whisper of a lover’s touch. A familiar and longed-for warmth that drifted over to her, drawing her inside and enveloping her as soon as she walked into the darkness.

 

And once she did, she understood. She understood why the dark side hadn’t felt the way it had felt before. Why she’d felt none of its brashness and hollow words—or any of the other distinguishing marks it bore that would have made it impossible for her not to recognize its falseness.

 

How it could appeal to her in a way that only one thing ever could.

 

“Luke?”

 

He came forward, into the lone streak of light in the cave, raising his hands to his hood to lower it. She heard the air catch in her lungs when she saw his face, the realization hitting her then in no uncertain terms: he was here.

 

Luke Skywalker, the man she’d dreamt of every single night for five long, empty, lonely years, was here.

 

“You’ve come for me… You’ve finally come for me…”

 

She stepped closer, afraid at first he’d disappear if she did, and when he didn’t—when he reached up his hand and held it out for her to take, her pace quickened to a sprint and she flung herself in his arms, all the pent-up longing and aching spilling over at last in tears she’d held back for far too long. And she kissed him—deep and long, drinking him in as though nothing could ever be enough to make up for all this lost time. The taste of his mouth was exactly as she’d remembered.

 

“I knew you would,” she said, laughing shakily as he threaded his hands in her hair, feeling the warm wetness of his tears as he pressed his lips into her cheek. “All this time… I had faith.”

 

She didn’t stop to ask herself why. Or how it was that he got here or how he found her. Somewhere deep inside her, where logic was still functioning, she knew those questions mattered enough to be asked. That there was something more to this that she needed to probe, to doubt. But she didn’t care. She simply didn’t care.

 

All she wanted was to have this moment before it slipped away from her too, the way everything else had slipped away from her these many years. She had lost so much. Too much. The Force. Luke. Even the child they’d created, the baby she had thought would lead her back to him at last.

 

But not this. Not this time.

 

“I’ve missed you so much…” His hands came up to her face to cup it, forehead sinking down onto hers. “I wasn’t sure if I had anything left in me to keep hoping.”

 

 “Don’t leave… please don’t leave…”

 

She felt something change in his touch, felt the warmth recede from his skin, replaced by a coolness that would have shocked her if she hadn’t been still been so heady.

 

“The way you left me? The way you betrayed what we had?”

 

The words struck her with the impact of a punch. She staggered back, severing herself from his touch. But she knew even before she broke free from his hold that it was no longer Luke’s. And through the blur of tears, she saw her worst fears confirmed.

 

“Geith…”

 

The smile was nothing like the one she remembered, the one that once made her heart ache to behold. Though the lines and angles and contours of his face were that of the lover she’d lost long ago, she knew this was not the same man.

 

“Did you think there wouldn’t be a price, Callie?”

 

“Don’t,” she said, shaking her head, as though the mere act would make this apparition disappear. “Don’t you call me that-”

 

“What’s the matter, baby?”

 

He reached out to touch her shoulder, his hand nothing like Luke’s, lacking the tenderness of his caress, and instinctively, she jerked it away.

 

“You’re not real… None of this is real…”

 

“No? Maybe not. Maybe it’s all in your head, but it’s not going to make me go away.” He smiled, the rust in his beard dark in the shadows of the cave. Like the color of blood. “And I’m here to remind you of what you did…”

 

“You’re the one who left,” she said. “You’re the one who betrayed _me-_”

 

“And so you chose to do the same to the lover you claimed to love more than anything in the world?” He came closer, impossibly close, then touched the lightsaber that hung from her hip. “You chose the Force over him-”

 

“No… No…”

 

And even as she shook her head, she knew why the words cut into her so.

 

_Search your feelings, you know it to be true…_

 

“No!!”

 

“You even kept the fact that you had his child from him…”

 

Tears spilled from her eyes. Wounds long closed suddenly reopened, blood spilling forth as though the gash had never healed in the first place.

 

“You are not going to twist that around, do you understand me? You don’t know anything about what happened-”

 

“Do you think he can ever forgive you for that?”

 

_Don’t believe him… he’s not real…_

 

“I tried to get away… I tried to get away from Taselda and get back to him to tell him…”

 

Geith’s eyes flickered with delight. He was actually delighting in her pain of having to relieve this all again.

 

“But you were too weak,” he said. “Too weak in the Force.”

 

“Stop it!”

 

“Too weak to bear a child that lived, too weak to tell her father that she ever existed-”

 

“Shut up!”

 

She stepped back, losing her footing on the unsteady ground and stumbling down onto her knees. She could feel the blood trickling out where the skin had broken over the rough rocks. But the sting she felt didn’t hurt nearly as much as the words he was flinging towards her.

 

“There was another choice, you know.” The voice had changed again. Smooth and hollow, like tin in her ears. “There still is.”

 

Callista looked up to see that Geith had disappeared as well, and in his place, a horrific sight: a creature that resembled a woman, but barely—lips that spanned the width of its face and looked as though they could swallow anything that came in its path, and short, stubby arms that reached towards her, as if longing for an embrace, tentacles writhing where its fingers should have been.

 

“Who are you?? What-”

 

“Who I am doesn’t matter, Callista.”

 

She felt a chill race up her spine. Her first instinct was to turn and run, but it was only then that the realization set in: she couldn’t move. The creature extended one of its hands towards her, beckoning her upwards. Callista tried to resist the pull, but her muscles and bones betrayed her.

 

“Don’t you feel it?”

 

“Feel what?”

 

The creature smiled. It was the ugliest smile she had ever seen in her life.

 

“The dark side… It’s here, in this cave. It surrounds you. As it has, ever since you first touched it-”

 

“No!!”

 

“You were a fool, Callista. You turned away from it… You turned away from it when it could have helped you. Saved you.”

 

“That’s a lie! The dark side always lies…”

 

The creature’s mouth twisted. Callista couldn’t tell if its smile had gotten wider or if it was expressing displeasure at her for daring to challenge it, but the burst of dark energy that spewed forth from it in the next instant—like the blast of a detonator, but a thousand times more devastating—left no doubt which it was.

 

“Why did you come here?” it bellowed at her. The stench of its breath made her sick in the pit of her stomach. “You were looking to reclaim your lost powers, were you not?”

 

Callista couldn’t bring herself to answer. Humiliation sunk deep into her bones. For the first time in six years—all the years that the Force had been silent in her body—she actually felt ashamed for seeking it. For wanting it back in her life so badly that she had been willing to sacrifice everything for the chance to feel it again, touch it again. For believing that it was actually possible to do so, if she could just reach a little further, stretch out a little more.

 

And this is what her desperation had led her to.

 

It was worse than Geith’s betrayal. Worse than the degradation of Taselda’s imprisonment. Worse than Beldorion and Ashgad and the Kheilwar, all the horrors she’d seen in the Clone Wars and even the Will.

 

Even the Will, which had taken her very life.

 

As though sensing her thoughts, the creature laughed, a terrible, cruel laugh meant to torment her.

 

“Do you want to see?” it said. “Everything that you lost because you were too weak?”

 

“And let you lie to me again? Never!”

 

The creature tilted its ugly head, regarding her. It seemed surprised—if such a face could register surprise—that she was fighting it.

 

“No lies,” it said. “For there is nothing more painful than the truth.”

 

Callista tried shut her eyes, but the creature forced them open, and then the images came.

 

A little girl with a long tail of dark blond hair, curls spilling out of a loose braid. Round face with a determined mouth and her father’s chin dimple. And those eyes. Her eyes.

 

Gray like the color of a brewing storm.

 

“Mama!” she called out. Callista’s heart ached at the word. “Mama, look what I can do!!”

 

The little girl reached out a hand towards a table and Callista could see that upon it lay a lightsaber. It quivered and shook, then began to rise—slowly at first, then gaining momentum until it swung up in the air in a long, wide arch and landed in the little girl’s hand.

 

“That’s magnificent, child!”

 

That voice. Callista would know that voice anywhere…

 

She heard the creature laugh beside her.

 

“Recognize her?” it said. “The girl… she is about five years old now, wouldn’t you say?”

 

Callista shook her head. “No… No, I am not going to let you trick me. It’s a lie, just like everything you’ve conjured up!”

 

_Search your feelings, you know it to be true…_

 

“Who was it who told you your child was stillborn?”

 

Callista felt the air seep out of her lungs.

 

“No…”

 

“Did you really think Taselda would be able to resist such a prize-”

 

“I held her… I held her in my arms, she wasn’t breathing…”

 

“Yes, the drugs were powerful… They could make you see anything, believe anything…”

 

“I would have known… I would have known if my daughter had lived…”

 

The creature smiled again, more cruel than ever. And then it lowered the blow.

 

“Not if the Force in you was dead.”

 

If she had control of her body, she would have fallen to the ground. Fallen to her knees and felt her sobs wrack through her body with the force of an earthquake. But she didn’t. The creature made sure of that. And all she could do was let the tears come, flow down her cheeks and into her mouth where its tang turned to bitterness in an instant.

 

“Have you had enough? Will you give into the dark now and end your own agony?”

 

“Go to hell.”

 

“Very well, then. You’ve chosen the harder road…”

 

If she could have, she would have drawn her lightsaber, ended this now while she still had her sanity.

 

The little girl thinned into a mist, then disappeared. Callista felt her heart tear away from her body. The images came again, more figures. As they took shape, she could see that they were those of two adults this time—a man and a woman. She held her breath as recognition began to dawn on her.

 

Luke. Luke with someone else.

 

Luke locked in an embrace, a fierce, desperate kiss. Red hair filling his hands. Callista knew exactly who this was in Luke’s arms.

 

“No more,” she said. “Please… show me no more of this…”

 

“Isn’t this what you wanted?” the creature said. “For him to find someone else?”

 

“Please don’t…”

 

The images shifted. A baby cried, its screams becoming louder as the new images came into focus, and Callista saw Luke again—radiant and smiling as he looked down at his child. His son.

 

_No… not this… _

 

“He’ll be strong in the Force, just like his father…”

 

“Stop… please, just stop…”

 

“And he will love this child with his entire being because it’s the child he’s longed for his entire life…”

 

The creature laughed again.

 

“You walked away, Callista. You walked away and left him to walk his own path. Did you really think it was a path that was going to lead him back to you?”

 

_Everything has a price…_

 

“I wanted him to be happy. If he’s happy, then that’s all that matters…”

 

“How very noble of you. I _almost­­_ believe you.”

 

_Your feelings betray you. _

 

Once more, the images shifted. Luke, haggard and unshaven, looking not unlike the way he had in those final moments on the _Eye_, when he had finally accepted her decision to destroy it at all costs. He was crying. Tears pouring down his face, tracing a path down the scar on his cheek.

 

“See how he grieves her,” the creature said. “How he grieves her more than he ever grieved the loss of you…”

 

“Stop it!! Stop this!!”

_Search your feelings, you know it to be true…_

 

The images vanished abruptly. Callista realized only then that the creature had released her from its hold and she had fallen to the ground. She looked up, stunned to see that it had changed form once again.

 

“Cray?”

 

It came forward to stand over her, tall and long-limbed as Cray had been, moving with her grace and elegance, but her beautiful face bearing none of her warmth or openness.

 

“Was it worth it?” the creature said, mimicking Cray’s perfectly in pitch and timbre, so much so that Callista had to remind herself it wasn’t truly her. “My sacrifice?”

 

“You know nothing about what happened-”

 

The creature ignored her, pressing on. Plunging the knife even more deeply into Callista’s already open wound.

 

“I gave you a chance that I never had—that I would have given _anything_ to have…”

 

“I thought I was doing the right thing,” Callista said, wondering in that moment whether she was trying to justify it to the creature or to herself. “I just… wanted to do the right thing…”

 

There was no mercy. Just cold, hard condemnation and it bore down on her again without a moment’s reprieve.

 

“Did you? Or were you just giving in to your own selfish impulse?”

 

The sobs gave way to a wail. Callista could feel her entire body shaking with each breath and there was not a damn thing she could do about it, so she just let it take over, bending her head low, unable to look the creature in the eyes. All she felt was shame.

 

Deep, wrenching shame.

 

“You can still prevent this. Everything you saw, you can change it…”

 

_Don’t believe its lies… _

 

“You can still get them back, Callista… your daughter and Luke—you can prevent him from marrying another, from fathering a child that’s not of your body… Don’t you want that? Don’t you want to reclaim the life you were cheated out of?”

 

_Everything has to be paid for. Everything has a price…_

 

“Not at this cost,” she said. “Not if it means betraying everything.”

 

The laugh that came was callous and chilling.

 

“Oh, but my dear… you lost _everything_ a long time ago. There is nothing else left to betray.”

 

Callista rose to full height, and as she did, Cray’s face twisted, morphing into the creature’s once more.

 

“You’re wrong. Whatever I might have lost, I could lose still more. And I will not let my legacy be one that they’d be ashamed of.”

 

A horrible smile formed on the creature’s ugly mouth.

 

“Spoken like a true short-sighted idealist.”

 

“That’s because I’m a Jedi.” She paused to take a breath before she uttered the next words, because she knew now where this was headed. There was no other way. No other choice. “And I will die a Jedi.”

 

The creature stared back at her. For a moment, Callista thought that it would actually show clemency. But she knew it was incapable of such a thing.

 

“So be it, Jedi.”

 

She heard a scream tear through the air, one of inhuman pain and anguish—it was her voice, her scream, yet she felt no pain, only the pull of a deep, black void, her essence being drained from her slowly until there was nothing left but a faint whisper.

 

And before her consciousness was swallowed up altogether by nothingness, she uttered the words she hoped beyond anything would be heard by the person who needed most needed to hear them.

 

_Forgive me, Luke. I love you. And I will love you always…_


End file.
